UTC joins network of universities and cities doing tech research

The city of Chattanooga and UTC were welcomed this week into a network of universities that includes Harvard, Georgia Tech, Johns Hopkins and Notre Dame.

Although they were granted membership a few months ago, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and the city were officially introduced to other members of the MetroLab Network during the group’s annual summit meeting in Atlanta.

“This type of coordinated partnership between UTC and the city of Chattanooga has extensive, long-term gains for everyone,” Chancellor Steven Angle said in a statement Monday.

As part of MetroLab, UTC and Chattanooga will have access to technology research being done in 41 cities, four counties and 55 universities. Other members of the network will have the same access to UTC and Chattanooga’s work.

Angle and others at UTC have spent the last few years “deepening the university’s focus in collaborating with the city and the greater community so that the outcomes of the research are more meaningful,” said Mina Sartipi, University of Chattanooga Foundation professor and one of the leading figures in UTC’s acceptance into MetroLab.

“Chattanooga’s city officials and researchers have already rolled up their sleeves to figure out how to work together towards finding the most informed solutions possible to specific challenges,” MetroLab’s Executive Director Ben Levine said in a news release.

Ken Hays, president of the Enterprise Center in Chattanooga, noted that as part of MetroLab, UTC is part of a national trend when it comes to scientific research.

“One of the movements that’s happening in the national research world is the direction of cities and researchers working together,” Hays said.

The Enterprise Center in Chattanooga is a nonprofit group with a goal to establish and market the city as a hub of technological innovation and research. Hays points to Chattanooga’s 10-gig fiber-optic network and SmartCities initiative as credentials that the city is one of the country’s leaders in technological innovation. Being asked to join MetroLab “is a great testament to the efforts that have gone on and what the goals are here.”

UTC and Chattanooga will share their data on three locally generated research projects.

Already underway, UTC is collaborating with the University of Vermont and the city of Burlington, Vt., in a project using ground-piercing radar to examine Chattanooga’s underground utility pipes and conduits and document their condition and location.

The goal is to fix any structural problems but also to map pipelines not listed on the city’s current underground map. In those cases, the conduit may be accidentally damaged by construction and other projects that don’t know it’s there.

UTC and Chattanooga, in partnership with Georgia Tech, are conducting what is dubbed “The Autonomous Vehicle Planning Project” — integrating self-driving vehicles with those driven by human beings. Using the city’s 10-gig fiber-optic network, the study will, among other angles, examine such situations as bad weather knocking out the GPS systems that control self-driving cars and how they can communicate efficiently and safely with human-driven vehicles.

Researchers from UTC, Chattanooga, the University of Washington, Portland State University and US Ignite are studying the various transportation choices in Chattanooga — vehicles, buses, bikes, walking — with the goal of integrating them into an overall system that promotes physical health.

“Being a member of MetroLab Network is very exciting for my research and the work of my colleagues,” Sartipi said.